


irrefutable evidence of hanky panky

by missi



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M, this might be how the story went
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-24
Updated: 2005-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:48:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missi/pseuds/missi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>another snapshot of how it went and might have gone</p>
            </blockquote>





	irrefutable evidence of hanky panky

[1]  
there's a boy leaning against a wall of rain, aerial held high  
calling 'come on thunder, come on thunder'  
  
Justin sometimes wonders why it wasn't raining the night he met Brian. It seems like maybe it would have been fitting, given that he's Justin and that's Brian and what exactly the-entity-known-as-Brian and Justin is. Rain would have been perfect. A sparse, constant drizzle.  
  
It had rained earlier that day, he remembers his sneakers being wet from the puddles as he made his way down Liberty Avenue; it hadn't helped that Daphne’d pulled over into a gutter and he'd stepped out directly into it. His toes squished around while he talked to the guy who wasn't Brian (that's how he thinks of the first man who ever hit on him like that, as the guy who wasn't Brian) and while he stood under the streetlamp.   
  
But when he met Brian, Justin was an angel in a halo of street light, or something equally as cheesy as that, and then he's glad it wasn't raining, because a drowned cat is not sexy.  
  
And they did meet, and with the operatic drama that would follow, it was a meeting worthy of Wagner and ecstasy. "Liebestod" and swirling colors, fingers of sensation. Justin's eyes sparkling with that which would kill Brian if he hadn't pumped every letter of the alphabet into his system, and that was how they met. And it wasn't raining.  
  
The first truth was this: Brian loved fucking (Justin), and Justin was a fucking stalker.  
  
Justin was blond, and young, and beautiful, and he knew it. He was a perfect foil for Brian's tall, dark, and horny, and he knew that, too. He had a tickbox list of "things to know about Brian Kinney," and he learned them all well. Brian's attraction was physical, check. He was the twink Brian Kinney broke the no repeats rule for, check. Brian didn't believe in love, triple check.  
  
That was okay. Justin could believe in love enough for both of them.   
  
The things to know about Justin Taylor: he knew (or thought he did until it was) that it, this thing he was doing with Brian, was more, was real, or something. He was an excellent pupil and fantastic in bed. Justin was a defiant leech who refused to go home and wanted everything. He felt, he felt and expressed, and he was unlike any trick Brian had taken home before. He was at once impatient and ready to wait because he was the type to go after what he wanted, and what he wanted was Brian's cock  
  
Heavily addictive personalities find one another, and it's a matter of science and chemical reaction -- Brian made it an early night one time too many, and then Justin was an installation piece, possibly permanent.  
  
Justin came out of the closet with a theatrical bang, complete with a hateful father and a readymade adoptive family. His dad tried to kill Brian with his car, and then he tried to beat the hell out of him, and then Justin was living with Brian. (This was a mistake, and then Justin was living with Debbie, and that was better.) He thought he wanted to be what Brian wanted, he tried to be what he thought Brian would want.  
  
(Brian would only want him if he was Justin, and it would be a lesson five years in the making.)   
  
His fierce blowing down of the closet door along with his extracurricular activities at school got him into a little bit of trouble, and Justin found himself with a real enemy. To make matters worse, he has balls bigger than Pittsburgh and made of the city's namesake ore when he's with Brian, and while Brian will always have his back, it makes him stupid and earns him a bat to the head. Brian did the unexpected and made Justin's night, and Justin paid some extreme arbitrary price for it.  
  
It's not his fault, it's not Justin's fault, the blood seeping into the concrete owed itself to dogma and intolerance, and it changed everything, including Brian, never expected to change and certainly not for some twink who followed him home.  
  
Justin wakes up in the hospital and thinks about the dream he was having, the one where he and Brian meet in a rainy alley instead of under a streetlamp, where he never saw Brian again.  
  
[2]  
without fear, insomnia  
I can’t get no sleep  
  
Brian doesn't sleep for months while Justin is in the hospital and even once he's [home] in the loft. He haunts the hospital like a pacing spectre, the night nurses all know his name but they mostly refer to him as "too bad he's gay," and they offer him parts of their lunches because they all notice he's losing weight. He wears a distinctive and repetitive pattern around the loft floor.  
  
(Justin will only know about the latter and then the floor will be refinished.)  
  
He drinks too much and smokes too much and fucks . . . a lot, and none of the heads are blonde and all of the heads are blonde.  
  
With Michael gone, no one knows quite what to say. Not to Brian, not about Brian, not about Justin or even the fact that Justin exists. Debbie and Lindsay are too happy to let him play "that's what the A stands for" when he's never at the hospital. He knows that Michael would have been, too, except that Mikey'd have been on his 'side', and Brian's glad he's not there.   
  
He's happy to oblige them all for the periods called daylight and wonders who made the fucking rule about no smoking in hospitals in between.  
  
Cynthia thinks Brian looks like an extra from a Romero flick (she has a secret passion for them). Mr "I bet you think this song is about you" avoids mirrors except when necessary, he's well aware of what he looks like when he's not sleeping well, and these days, he's not sleeping at all. His well tailored suits hang just a little bit.  
  
He's still the most fabulous fag in Pittsburgh, and extras from Dawn of the Dead don't wear Armani, even if the film is satirical commentary on commericalism in America. He hasn’t been alone in a long time, maybe that’s why he doesn’t sleep.  
  
Then Justin wakes up, and the night nurses don't see "too bad he's gay" again.  
  
He tries, Brian tries to see Justin, then Justin's mother tells him to fuck off, and then Justin is living with him, and he stays up nights wondering when he lost control. Justin finds the scarf, and Brian thinks, thank God, maybe now I'll be able to sleep.  
  
He can't.  
  
Brian floats through when he's not sleeping. He feels like nothing is quite real, like everything he reaches for, his hand passes through. He's gotten a lot of practice over the years at being fine. He took a lot of drugs in college. The episode he remembers most vividly is when he blew a little too much K and went into a hole that lasted for ever.  
  
This feels like that.  
  
No matter what station he’s got the Jeep tuned to in the mornings, even fucking NPR is playing Supertramp songs, and Brian always hated that fucking band. They weren’t cool in the 80s, they’re not cool now. He blames the drugs.   
  
He really sleeps for the first time when Justin thanks him for Pride. Or, more melodramatically, Brian slumbers as Justin becomes (mostly) whole again. He’ll stay up nights later when Justin makes friends with a handgun.  
  
[3]  
dirty numb angel boy  
in the doorway boy  
  
It turns out Craig Taylor really won’t pay for Justin to go to some sissy art school, and he can’t qualify for any loans, and what do you know, tips from the diner don’t pay for PIFA either. Everyone in gay PA seems to have lost their mind, and Justin is no different. He asserts his independence and gets his angel wings to pay for school and nearly fails out of fucking life in the process.   
  
He hates the way it seems everyone is looking … not down on, but at him for it. It’s like Mikey’s not sure what’s happened to the chicken, and Debbie and Jennifer and Emmett and Mel and Linds worry, and Ted looks on with mild interest, and Brian feigns some sort of complete disinterest, someone’s always watching out for the twink. But he can do this, he needs to do this.  
  
Justin’s not sure when it stops being about the money.  
  
He wants to be a man instead of Kinney’s kept boy, hates the most the way it feels like Brian is humoring him. Can’t put a finger on it, why he feels that way, what it is about Brian’s doing and saying that gives him that feeling, but he does, and it’s probably partially why he lets Sap blow him to get on the bar. It’s something he can control. Justin’s not surprised but slightly angered when Brian offers him the loan, now he’s not even doing him the so-called favor of humoring him.  
  
Besides, he knows Brian knows what he’s doing and why, knows it is and isn’t a mere gesture on Brian’s part, one that he’s putting on for Justin’s effect, and he learned the real meaning of ambivalence when he studied for the SATs.  
  
And now he’s not studying for his classes, and he’s got homework piled up to the ceiling, and he never feels younger than when he’s begging off time to work on projects; he swallows the humiliation and takes the party. It helps that it feels like an act of defiance against the loan agreement, sort of.  
  
Everything gets fucked, it turns out Sap’s idea of a good time is raping twinks he’s GHB’d, and Justin’s happy to get out mostly untouched, and he’s losing his grip totally, completely, on his life and the things that happen to him and the people around him. He doesn’t go immediately back to the loft, he walks around (or stumbles is more like it, until his steps even out) and thinks about how whatever it is that he’s literally walking to clear his head.  
  
Justin stands in front of the building on Tremont for what feels like approximately eighty-five years, and his hand shakes when he puts the key to the door. He takes the stairs and works up a good polish on the self-hate-fueled frustration he’s got going, he wants to put his head through the wall and he wants to apologise and he wants to run away and he’s everything all at once, and by the time he goes in the loft, his dick is weirdly hard and he needs to lose his mind.  
  
He tries his hand, his last stab at control, in the bedroom and stalks into a completely silent bedroom (everything is quiet inside, including Brian and himself for once) on little cat feet in soft grey pants; crawls into bed with a head full of white noise and a hand full of young cock and a primal instinct to dominate, to show he isn’t weak and he isn’t manipulated and he’s the one in control of his life. He says nothing and offers no foreplay, just pushes on Brian’s shoulder like it’s something he does every night.  
  
(Which he doesn’t, this is the third time he’s topped Brian. Ever.)  
  
And he snaps out of it about half way through, really realizes that he’s actually fucking Brian and almost stops, almost pulls out and runs for the door. Then Brian looks back at him, and his hips resume without his consent.  
  
Justin recognizes Brian’s concession to his dignity when he takes the money but insists on the loan and he doesn’t break his balls on it. It’s simple, really, he accepts Brian’s help, and Brian gives it freely. He’ll never realize the full extent to which Brian’s glad he took the money. Kinney’s been around Liberty Avenue a long time and he has no love for Saperstein or his dancers or his fucking parties.   
  
[4]  
too low to find my way  
too high to wonder why  
  
Brian gets lost a little bit when he finally makes Justin choose – his message of “I love myself more than I’ll let myself love you, this is who I am” comes across loud and clear, and Justin leaves rather than takes him, walks out the door with Ian in hand, off to live the life of a starving artist with nothing but love to keep clothes on his back and food in his ever open mouth and his tuition bills paid. He goes about his business and expects relief? boredom? something other than this ache in his cock (so that’s where his cock is.)  
  
The munchers have a birthday or anniversary or some sort of fucking party, and Brian goes, shows up wasted with two engaged leather bears in tow, and avoids without avoiding Justin and Ian. Michael gets a little lippy with his support and Brian hits him, punches Mikey right in the face and decides he has clearly gone insane. He hates Justin for it, but mostly he hates Jack Kinney.  
  
Brian’s glad he’s fucking loaded because pros that look like Justin cost a mint, and he almost regrets making Justin leave.  
  
Justin’s ass was free.  
  
He thinks Anita should be charging him wholesale for the spectrum of shit he buys. He also thinks that his tolerance has possibly gotten a little high.  
  
Possibly.  
  
Michael would still leave Ben for Brian in a second (it’s the biggest elephant in the room since Deb’s housewarming gift to Mel and Linds four years prior); Brian can’t push Mikey off any more cliffs (he refuses to think about how it’s maybe mostly or partially or because of Justin that their friendship survived the first one), so he offers him his dream decidedly without rose-tinted spectacles, and it’s not everything Michael ever wanted.  
  
Brian is not everything Michael ever wanted.  
  
And if all that weren’t enough while he’s allegedly not recovering from a broken heart, Brian bails out Theodore’s retarded ass with the cops while selling his soul to the American capitalist version of the devil – the politician. He wants to lose himself, needs to do it, and discovers that thirty-one isn’t as forgiving as twenty-four about it.  
  
He kind of wants to explode. How very un-Brian Kinney of him.  
  
Six days after Justin moves out, Brian buys new furniture for the loft. It’s pathetic, really, he’s all alone with his expensive leather and wood and whiskey and Justin’s fucking computer, and he blows briefcases full of cash on things that have to be ordered off a showroom floor. He buys a new coffee table because the old one was the perfect height for Justin to lie on while blowing a couched Brian, and he’d liked to do that with Peter Jennings in the background. Justin was kind of a weird kinky, and Brian liked that about him.  
  
He buys new sheets because suddenly somehow he couldn’t sleep with the smell of Snuggle, and he couldn’t get it out of the old ones. He moves things around the loft, adds and subtracts the Brian Kinney version of tchotchkes. Justin comes over, calls him out on the coffee table, and Brian tells him to take it with an implied sort of painful and get the fuck out.  
  
Justin, Justin and Brian, and Brian hates it while living for every second. He thinks Justin grew up overnight, or at least looks like it; also, Justin’s never been hotter, and Brian wants him around. He strikes up a friendship just to show he can, that they can. Maybe it’s sorry, and maybe it isn’t, and Brian finds his tongue in his cheek a lot. And since to be civil for them is to be inoperably siamese, that’s that. Brian enlists Justin to help with Carnivale, and Justin saves his ass and returns the bracelet.  
  
Brian almost tries to kiss fuck him then, but he doesn’t, and then, then thank sweet Christ, he sees Justin in the back room at Babylon fucking some guy who is decidedly **not** Ethan, and _then_ he’s fucking Brian with his eyes, and Brian returns the gesture. Ben calls it the greatest reunification since Germany, but the East side kind of still hasn’t got their shit together, and Brian is determined to not be East Germany.  
  
[5]  
he’s the nicest thing I’ve seen  
and together, we’re gonna wait around to die  
  
Cancer, Brian’s got cancer, and it’s not just any cancer, it’s fucking testicular cancer. Brian’s manhood is being literally attacked, and Justin feels like his life’s become like the soaps he used to watch at the hospital. He read somewhere that Mike Tyson watched soaps, he’s gotta watch his stories, Allah, and Justin has Daphne tape them for him and never tells Brian. He wonders if Brian will get hooked on soaps. He also wonders how he’s going to tell Brian he knows.  
  
Brian ‘takes a trip to Ibiza’, and Justin is reminded of this book Daphne lent him in which the protagonist and coworker pals termed long blocks of work ‘trips to [x destination]’ based on length of time. This is as accurate as that. Brian comes back pale and definitely not rested, and Michael, fucking Michael blows it. Justin understands a little this time, but he still hates him for being able to do it.  
  
Justin never thinks Brian is more beautiful than when he’s throwing him and his tapes from Liberty Video into the hall. How is it possible to love someone so that you want to burst and so honestly want to kill him at once? Smothering and ‘fuck you’ don’t go together well but it’s sort of all he wants to do. He’s kind of disgusted with himself sometimes, the way he loves Brian regardless of how they treat each other, the way his love is more than adoration and that’s how he knows it’s real now.  
  
Not to mention he feels guilty, he can’t help it, he feels like he owes Brian everything and nothing, and he wants to give him everything and nothing, and when he closes his eyes, all he sees is stained white silk and that’s the most fucking melodramatic thing he’s ever heard.  
  
(Justin’s pretty sure the bat damaged more than fine motor skills, it’s the only reasonable explanation for his irrational slavish Brian Kinney devotion.)  
  
Daphne looks horrified when Justin appears at their door, she gasps and even covers her mouth. He rolls his eyes because he knows crying makes him blotchy, but when she reaches for him, he realizes she’s gaping at the small purple smudge coming up on his right cheek. His expression is equally as horrified when he realizes she’s suggesting Brian hit him, he hadn’t, it’s really the last thing he’d ever do (except, you know, during that whole Justin-joins-a-cult phase, but that…)  
  
The bruise isn’t even from when Brian shoved him from the loft. Ironically, his battered housewife’s excuse is true – he ran into the doorjamb on his way out of the building, hadn’t been looking where he was going. The absurdity of that plus Daphne’s honest offer of her concealer makes them both laugh until they’re hoarse and holding their stomachs, and Justin misses her all at once, they never spend time together anymore.  
  
He starts crying so quickly that it surprises him and alarms Daphne, but she combs her fingers through his hair and hands him tissue and reminds him to take his Allegra or Claritin or Zyrtec or whatever the fuck he’s on for those allergies.  
  
Michael can do “maybe it’s sorry and maybe it isn’t” almost as well as Brian himself, and he not so gently reminds Justin of exactly who Brian is. It’s like having Mikey’s blessing, four years in the making, and he’s learning not to look a gift horse in the mouth. He even gets the recipe for Deb’s chicken soup and goes to the market for free range meat and organic vegetables, he’s done his reading about pesticides and carcinogens.  
  
Justin lets himself into the loft and the Brian damaged part of his brain glues his feet to the floor and puts the right ‘fuck you’ in his mouth when Brian comes home. He knows now how scared Brian is, and that scares him, but fuck Brian if he thinks he’s going to be scared to die alone.  
  
[6]  
there’s nothing to live for when I’m sleeping alone  
and I wash the windows outside in hopes that the glare will bring you around  
  
Brian keeps the middle drawer of his dresser empty even after he’s convinced himself. Justin is never coming back from California. He made that conviction thirty seconds after putting Justin on the airplane. This is how he sees it, I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? The glimmer and shine of is infinitely preferable to the gloomy grey of the Pitts, and Brian a) hates himself for using any sort of alliterative thought and b) pretends to be sure he’d never personally return from any such place, and so why would Justin?  
  
He buys Babylon to keep his mind occupied, not at all because Theodore’s suggestion that he spend it on anything at all having to do with Justin freezes the expression on his face. Idle hands still do the devil’s work, which is what Brian’s always been best at, but he makes sure his tricks are never blond. He never opens ‘Justin’s drawer’ but it stays empty, and he kind of ignores its existence. But it’s also kind of always in the back of his mind. It’s a lot like Justin that way.  
  
It just so happens that Justin’s departure coincides with Mel and Linds’ secret breakup, and Brian finds himself spending a lot of time with his son because he knows when Lindsay needs him around. He describes California as a magical land full of fairies when Gus asks for Justin, and he shrugs and tells Lindsay exactly how it is when she asks his opinion for anything having to do with Mel.  
  
Rage is expectedly canceled, and Justin returns to his empty drawer and Brian fucking a trick in a show obviously planned for his benefit. His ‘this is what you’ve been missing, Sunshine’ act garners what must be the appropriate response, a bemused smile. Justin is home, this is what home is.  
  
Brian likes to think he doesn’t do cycles, but everything’s changing around them, their family is growing up and settling in, and he knows Justin wants to, but what Justin knows is that Brian is Peter Pan. Brian thinks Justin is Tinkerbell, but when he gets syphilis, he finds that Justin is Wendy after all. He can’t fucking believe it, some trick’s dirty mouth gives his thing of beauty and joy forever an STD, and it’s the disease that broke the camel’s back, and Justin actually walks out on him. Again.  
  
This time Justin doesn’t use Daphne’s as a waiting place, and it feels more permanent to them both somehow.  
  
It has to be Michael’s fault, right? He and Justin have been as buddy-buddy as the two of them can get since Mikey went and got all fucking domesticated, and Brian blames Michael to his face, tells him he turned Justin into a Stepford fag and that he’s the reason Justin left him, except in not such pathetic words. They haven’t fought like this since they were eighteen and Brian lived across town but it might have been another world.  
  
Brian throws himself into this ridiculous contest with replacement Brian Barbie and gets exactly what he always had out of it, fucking nothing, and now even he’s convinced it’s the end.  
  
An important aside: Michael loved Brian when no one else did, and it probably kept him from becoming a statistic. It’s the thing they never say. This is why Brian can tell Mikey he loves him, and it’s why he does, and it’s attached Michael to him for life. He never wants Justin to feel attached, he doesn’t want them to owe one another, so he never tells him.  
  
Some homophobic asshole blows up Babylon with pretty much everyone inside, Brian is one of the seemingly random few who is not and hears about it on the radio. All he can think is that Justin is there, Justin was in the explosion. Justin is fine, he’s okay, but then it’s off to the hospital with Mikey, who is decidedly not okay. The world must be tilting sideways because first Brian breaks down at the hospital, and then it’s back to the crime scene, and he tells Justin he loves him, says it twice to be sure.  
  
The domino effect is amazing – if delayed. It takes not one but two actual marriage proposals before Justin believes him, and by now, the world must be completely upside down.  
  
Except they’re getting married, and then they aren’t, and that’s that.   
  
It’s like getting Brian to admit it is Justin’s key to freedom because then he’s off to New York to be the best homosexual he can be. (He gets to be the Brian that Brian never got to be.)  
  
[7]  
don’t worry, even if things end up a bit too heavy  
we’ll all float on, alright  
  
Justin lives in a closet-sized hovel over a bodega in the East Village, he doesn’t go in there much less actually buy groceries from them. He carries mace and learns all the letters in Alphabet City. He researches his routes for everywhere he needs to go beforehand, and his hand hurts a lot these days. He’s got an agreement with an NYU student for studio space. He’s never been so lonely.  
  
Nothing feels like it’s his, the apartment came furnished and there’s a kiln in the corner of the studio, and he’s never even taken pottery. The light here isn’t as good as at PIFA, or at the loft, or even that fucking hole he lived in before coming here. Justin even feels out of place on the subway, feels intimidated by born and bred New Yorkers; however, his monthly paid Metrocard feels a little real, and he thinks maybe this feeling will pass, maybe.  
  
It’s just that he feels temporary here, like a face at the coffee shop window for a few months and then it’s gone, but he’s not, he’s here and this is it. He gave up marriage and a house in the country and the only man he’s sure he’ll ever love for this city and this life, this has to be everything.  
  
He gets a phone call three weeks after his arrival, and it’s a car service waiting downstairs for him. It turns out that Brian’s ‘only time’ means fly-by-night sojourns to the Plaza whenever he feels like it, and it settles Justin somehow. He feels less like a visitor and more like an expatriate, more like a … permanent visitor, and he feels like his 1500 SAT scores fail him for not being able to find a better term.  
  
Justin goes out to the clubs, a blowjob is a blowjob and an ass is an ass, and he might love Brian but he still wants to fuck, and he does. He subconsciously follows the rules he broke before and comes home by three to no one. He notices that he’s painting a lot of liplike imagery into his work these days and wonders if maybe he misses kissing a little.  
  
He just, he just wonders if he’ll ever stop wondering when he’ll be going home and realize he is home. Justin hates whomever wrote the fucking cliché about home being where the heart is and hopes they died penniless and unhappy. He’s been there eight months when he realizes it’s a routine, his life has a routine, and he’s actually living in New York. Justin Taylor lives in New York. Justin Taylor, up and coming Pittsburgh-born artiste, lives and works in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York. He kind of wants to put it on letterhead.  
  
Then he just waits, waits impatiently for his first real show and patiently for Brian, he thinks he’ll always wait for Brian, and he signs his letters “sincerely, L. Cohen.”  
  
[8]  
this story is old, I know  
but it goes on  
  
Brian goes to New York three years after Justin. He wakes up one morning and calls Lindsay in Toronto, calls Michael in Faux-moville, packs the last bag and never looks in the rearview. He’s already arranged for parking the car once he’s there. He makes the drive in an hour’s less time than it’s supposed to take and takes advantage of Pennsylvania’s gas prices for the last time at the Jersey border.  
  
When he unlocks the door, Justin simply points at the boxes that had arrived two days before and asks where Brian’s sense of cliff-dropping surprise went. Brian has never looked so much like a Cheshire cat as when he reaches into his coat pocket for the same blue ring box. So that’s where it went. He’s quick to tell Justin that there’ll be no fucking commitment ceremony or any bullshit like that. Justin tells him he’s glad, he doesn’t want any of it anyway.  
  
After four days in Justin’s Greenwich studio, Brian moves them into a fucking Trump loft, and the story never ends.

**Author's Note:**

> [1]: "sometimes (lester piggott)", james  
> [2]: "insomnia", faithless  
> [3]: "born slippy", underworld  
> [4]: "lebanese blonde", thievery corporation  
> [5]: "waiting around to die", be good tanyas  
> [6]: "you wouldn't like me", tegan and sara  
> [7]: "float on", modest mouse  
> [8]: "last night i dreamt that somebody loved me", the smiths


End file.
